From the course: Developing a Critical Thinking Mindset
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Weighing the relevance of evidence
From the course: Developing a Critical Thinking Mindset
Weighing the relevance of evidence
- Before I met my husband, one of my good friends told me about her unsuccessful date with him. She said he ran a software company and he was boring. A few weeks later, I met my future husband at a party. Was it relevant that he ran a software company? Not to me, but maybe it would be relevant to an aspiring software engineer. Was it relevant that he was boring? It was. Until I realized that he was interesting and funny to me, determining relevance is tricky. It's context specific. And it's the second component of critical thinking. How often does someone present evidence to make their case and you're wondering what's your point? Yeah, that's often a sign that irrelevant evidence is afoot. Relevance is about whether the evidence provided to support or reject a claim matters. Whether it's pertinent, whether it relates to the claim. Irrelevant evidence doesn't support the claim and maybe deliberately added to mislead.…
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